Question What reasons do atheists have for caring about other people or for being socially responsible? Is there any difference other than semantics that differentiates those reasons from reasons derived from religious beliefs? (in other words, reasons to care about others or for being socially responsible seem only to derive from one of two sources: (a) "enlightened expanded selfishness" (if we all do it the world is a better place), or (b) because somehow it is the "right" thing to do, and the only issue in this case is the source that makes it "right"). Whenever I discuss this question with self-professed atheists, their arguments come across as sounding like "I don't like the term 'god'" or "I don't like the bad things that have been done in the name of organized religion". In other words, they also believe in something greater than the individual and are arguing over what to call it or how to describe it or where its justification comes from, yet underneath it all, they spring from a belief that something important that is greater than the individual is the reason. In other words, are atheists and theists both believers in the same fundamental concept and merely are arguing over how to describe it? Thanks! Joe.

Accepted:
April 27, 2011

Comments

This seems like a very insightful interpretation of what may unite some compassionate secular persons with people of faith who are also compassionate agents today. I especially appreciate your implied view that persons of faith who care for others and are compassionate are not doing so simply in obedience to (for example) divine commands. Both the religious and secular person may well transcend narrow self-interest, but I suggest there still is a significant difference between the two. A religious person in the Jewish-Christian-Islamic tradition as well as in Hinduism and Buddhism and other faiths believe that there is something sacred about caring for others. For Abrahamic faiths,for example. it is not only good to care for others because they are valuable in themselves, but also because they are created and loved by God. I am not suggesting that people who are secular and compassionate are thereby at a disadvantage or somehow working with an impaired view of vaues. Someone like George Kated (Princeton University) has actually argued that the secular account of human dignity is actually superior to religious accounts (see his recent book Human Dignity). But the religious person will still have a further story or account of the importance of caring for others that goes beyond what Kateb and other secular naturalists describe. If you like, the religious believer might be able to endorse a strong view of human dignity on similar or even the same grounds as someone like Kateb but claim that there is additional backup religiously. Best of wishes to you Joe and highest regards, Charles

I'd suggest that atheists have more or less the same reasons that theists caring about others, treating others well.

Of course, there's a possible reply that I'd like to set aside: perhaps some theists are decent to others only because they're afraid God will punish them if they aren't. But I don't think most theists think that way. They think, for example, that cruelty is just wrong. Atheists generally think the same.

Now it might seem that the theist has an advantage: the theist, it might seem can say why cruelty is wrong: it's wrong because God disapproves of it or because God commands us not to be cruel. But that by itself isn't very satisfying. Did God just arbitrarily decide that cruelty is wrong? What if he'd decided that it was right? Would that make it right? It's hard to see how.

We're now in the territory of the so-called Euthyphro argument (named for a Platonic dialogue in which Socrates makes a similar point.) There's a lot of appeal to the idea that God would forbid cruelty because it's wrong and God, being wise, has no trouble seeing this.

There's more that could be said on the matter of the relationship between what God commands and what's right and wrong, but let's move on. Your suggestion is that atheists ave something important in common with theists: they both believe in something "greater than the individual" and perhaps, you suggest, the argument is simply over what to call it.

I'd suggest that doesn't get it right. Atheists and theists agree that there's a good deal that's "greater" than the individual in this sense: there's much that's not up to the individual. We don't get to decide what the laws of nature are; we don't get to decide what the principles of logic are; we don't get to decide what the fundamental bits of matter are. And -- at least many theists and atheists would agree -- we don't get to declare what's right and wrong. But the theist believes something else: there is a being who is infinitely wiser than we are, infinitely more powerful than we are, and infinitely more good than we are. The atheist doesn't agree. This is a clear difference. Even if both sides agree that moral principles are in some sense "greater" than us, the theist doesn't think God just is the moral law, and the atheist doesn't believe there's any such being as God.